Ka'b ibn al-Ashraf

Ka'b bin al-Ashraf (Hebrew: כעב אבן אלאשרף‎‎ Ka'b iben al-Ashraf, Arabic: كعب بن الاشرف‎‎, died 624) was per Islamic texts a Jewish leader in Medina and a poet. He died on the order of the Islamic prophet Muhammad after the battle of Badr. Ka'b was born to a father from the Arab Tayy tribe and a mother from the Jewish Banu Nadir tribe; he was recognised as belonging to his mother's tribe, in which he was one of the leading men.

According to Ibn Ishaq, Muhammad called upon his followers to kill Ka'b because the latter "had gone to Mecca after Badr and provoked Quraysh against Muhammad. He also composed verses in which he bewailed the victims of Quraysh who had been killed at Badr. Shortly afterwards he returned to Medina and composed amatory verses of an insulting nature about the Muslim women." Other historiographical sources state that the reason for killing of Ka'b was that he had plotted with a group of Jews to kill Muhammad. The writings of the later commentators such as al-Zamakhshari, al-Tabarsi, al-Razi and al-Baydawi provide another distinct report according to which Ka'b was killed because Gabriel had informed Muhammad about a treaty signed by himself and Aba Sufyan creating an alliance between the Quraysh and forty Jews against Muhammad during Ka'b's visit to Mecca (According to Professor Uri Rubin, some allusions to the existence of an anti-Muslim treaty between Quraysh and Ibn al-Ashraf may be found in the earlier sources).

The 14th-century Hadith scholar Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani states that the reasons behind his death include the fact that he broke his covenant with the Muslims, travelled to the Quraysh in Makkah and made a pact with the Quraysh that they would join forces in waging war upon the Muslims.

The order to kill Ka'b is mentioned in numerous hadith in the Sahih al-Bukhari and in one Sahih Muslim.

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